Most Shared

Dress the Part: Downton Abbey

In everyone’s favorite PBS series, Downton Abbey, several actresses are vying for the best-dressed title, but ultimately, costume designers Susannah Buxton and Rosalind Ebbutt steal the show. The British period drama, centering on the aristocratic Crawley family, explores the relationship between the patricians who live upstairs and their servants downstairs. The three daughters of patriarch the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and his wife, Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern)—Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), and Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay)—parade around, pursuing suitors and being pursued, in such lavish, ornate dresses that in between analyzing the alliances and antagonism amongst the help, the unrequited love and lover’s quarrels suffered by the sisters, and a whole lot of deep-seated sibling rivalry, one can’t help but daydream for a second about what it might be like to raid these girls’ closets.

Borrowing vintage pieces from prop houses, Buxton and Ebbutt—masterminds at creating a mise-en-scène with clothes—often use dresses that have been worn by other actresses in the past (Lady Mary and Lady Edith both appear in dresses previously donned by Helena Bonham Carter and Catherine Zeta-Jones). But while only a third of the looks are made from scratch, the girls’ corsets are originals through and through and based on old patterns. One of Buxton’s goals is to ensure the silhouette is exactly of the era and that, she has claimed, can be done only with the appropriate undergarments. Things are set to change in season two, however. Premiering tonight, the Crawleys’ entire lives—from fashion to finances—are about to be transformed with the start of World War I. So as we prepare to hunker down for the war to end all wars, we take a minute to revel in the fashions of the day with this installment of "Dress the Part" and the slideshow above.